


Wake Me When It's Over

by NoisyNoiverns



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Drinking to Cope, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Drinking, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 15:47:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20530526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/pseuds/NoisyNoiverns
Summary: Desolas's parents are dead and burned. Four months after the fact, he isn't handling it well.





	Wake Me When It's Over

**Author's Note:**

> title from "the mystic" by adam jensen [[audio]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRUOGd_9orc) [[lyrics]](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/adamjensen/themystic.html)
> 
> idk if this would really qualify as m but like. there's some pretty explicit suicidal ideation in this so just to be safe. and yeah, there's your heads-up if you didn't read the tags, content warnings for suicidal ideation and alcohol

The cheerful clinking of glass bottles as Desolas opened the fridge seemed at odds with everything else going on in his head, cutting through the fog that had been there for months now. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was a nice sound, welcoming him back after another difficult day.

Then he'd retrieved the variety pack of flavored horosk he'd tucked away in the back and shut the door, and it was back down into the pit he went.

"Saren!" he called, turning and plodding out of the kitchen. "Saren, c'mere!"

He almost tripped going into the living room, stumbling over the tiny column of bone-white that had materialized in the threshold. He cursed, his horosk clinking ominously as he fought to stay upright. Saren barely twitched. "Spirits, kid, what have I told you?" he groused, brushing himself off. "Don't _stand_ there."

Saren's mandibles flickered, but he didn't speak, just watched Desolas with those big, pale eyes and hugged that stupid stuffed varren to his chest just a little bit tighter. Desolas waited for a long moment, then sighed and rubbed the top of his little brother's head. "I'm going for a walk. I'll be back later. Listen to Parmat."

Saren didn't reply. He hadn't in weeks. Desolas only felt his eyes on his back as he walked out the door.

The roof of his grandmother's high-rise probably wasn't the _greatest _place to sit and crack open a bottle or six, but it was his best option. The apartment had his little brother and his grandmother in it. Saren was too young to know what alcohol did, and Parmat didn't need to know that Desolas _did_. His friends from base were too far away for an afternoon trip, and they wouldn't know what to say anyway. And he definitely couldn't go to any bars by _himself_, not when his face had gone from a passing oddity to the star of every imperial news show overnight.

He just wanted to be alone.

So that's what he did, and what he had done at least twice a week for the past four long, torturous months of his bereavement leave. He got his hands on the hardest-hitting booze he could find, he went up to the roof, and he grieved in lonely silence.

In the heat of the early summer, the glass was cold enough to sting his hands as he pulled them free of the case and set a talon beneath the cap to crack it open. There was a routine to it, a steadfast pattern for his habit to follow. On the first bottle, the first sip came as he walked to the edge of the roof and sat down, tossing his legs over the side so the little safety rail for maintenance workers propped up his knees and his long, thin toes dangled over the edge. If he leaned forward, he'd get a dizzying look down at the street far below.

Not important. It was only the first bottle. With the first bottle, he mulled over the events of the day.

His friends had called from base today. They had news. Or, they called it news. Mundane gossip, really.

The fussy colonel nobody liked had gotten reamed out by a general for mistaking her for one of his own subordinates and starting to hassle her about regs. He was going to be transferred off-planet. _Good riddance,_ they all agreed. Even detail-obsessed Malcolus had gotten picked on for having a few atoms of dust too many under his bunk during inspection.

They'd finally found an MRE even Heavy couldn't stomach, some nasty, sun-scorched thing a new transfer had brought from Shaal. Heavy had looked ill just hearing it described. Desolas felt a vague pang of sympathy. He'd _met _the giant Altakirin by daring the survival hike at large to eat an MRE the lieutenant had warned him to pass off to some other sucker. Apparently, his scrap-iron stomach had finally met its match.

Lupidras had heard a rumor about their next assignment, once Desolas was back from leave. The four of them - Desolas, Heavy, Lupidras, and Malcolus - were going to be kept together. _Good unit cohesion,_ the report had said. _Give the traumatized little crybaby something familiar,_ Desolas kept to himself. They were going to Taetrus. Swamp region. _Fan-fucking-tastic._ At least the food was good.

The berry parfait horosk was too good to drink too quickly. Too much berry, not enough horosk. He set it aside, half-empty, and grabbed the second bottle. You could never go wrong with pretan tart booze, he'd found.

The taste of alcohol cut his tongue and burned his nose. Perfect. He took a long swig. Maybe Taetrus wouldn't be so bad. Get away from Carthaan, from the prairie, from the wind carrying memories back to him every time he tried to throw them away. The humidity would be awful, sure, but he'd heard the colonel there, some strict old drake named Cassi, was a good one, and the main base on Taetrus was close enough to a lake he could justify regular trips out. He'd never met an officer he couldn't charm.

One mandible flicked. They wouldn't be able to catch him, anyway. He'd just start running, and by the time they caught up, he'd already be underwater.

His feet twitched. What would _that _be like, he wondered? Going down, down, down into the depths, nothing but his own lungs to drive him back to the surface. He'd submerged himself in the local pool before, when it was just too hot to breathe and Dad couldn't take it in the studio anymore. He'd come out panting and told Desolas, _Come on, we're baking in our own skin, let's do something about-_

He shook his head violently and shoved the bottle against his mouth with more force than necessary, his eyes screwed shut and the nerves in his teeth setting every light in his brain ablaze as the glass knocked against them. He choked down more alcohol. The pain faded.

He didn't stop until he had to breathe, and he did so with a gasp and a gulp. He panted, free hand against his keel, then shook his head again and took a deep breath. _None of that._

His eyes stung as he shook the bottle and realized he'd choked down the last of it. Time for bottle number three.

The sharp familiarity of kolakoe slid down his throat next. Carthaan's native, favorite fruit. There'd been a kolakoe tree in the front yard, back home. Mom would let him stand on her shoulders to reach the low branches, when he was small and wanted a snack, before he got too big and-

He sat up and hurled the bottle away from him, as hard as he could. One mandible twitched at the shatter of glass against the building across the street. His brain mourned the loss of a mostly-full bottle. His aching heart didn't care.

Fourth bottle. He wasn't paying attention to the flavors anymore, just slamming it back. Horosk hit hard, but he'd been building up a tolerance ever since that first night he'd taken a shaking, screaming Saren back to base, his CO had solemnly handed him a bottle from her own cabinet, and they'd sat in silence while he drowned out both his brother's cries and his own with the comforting blackness at the bottom of a bottle. The first week he'd come up to the roof, he'd been down for the count after a single bottle. Now he needed that much just to start to feel numb, and it wasn't happening fast enough.

Sericordis had been right. She was one of the good officers, good leaders, good friends. She'd been the one to give him permission to grab his friends and take off for home, ignore everything else, just run, run, run until his lungs were bursting and his feet were throbbing and his mouth was screaming, screaming, screaming at what was waiting for him there. She'd sat with him on the shuttle back, letting herself be a barrier against the prying eyes of the rest of the squad while he held his shell-shocked little brother against his chest and cried until he couldn't anymore. She'd promised to take care of everything, she'd promised he and Saren wouldn't be separated, she'd promised everything would turn out okay. She'd said until that happened, a quiet place and a bottle of booze would do the trick. She'd been right.

He was gulping air, trying to reach the last few drops of blissful forgetting. The glass was ringing with the whimpering subvocals emanating from his cowl. He lurched forward, the bottle clattered to the ground, his head hit his knees as his hand searched for the next bottle. More, more, he needed _more,_ it wasn't _working._ Images swam in his mind's eye, strikingly clear as his real vision struggled with his half-drunken haze. Shattered plates and blue crusting over white and two shrouds over two bodies with the smallest mound between them where some small, childish, desperately in-denial part of him had insisted they should be holding hands, his own wordless howl clanged an echo around his skull over and over and never, _ever_ got even the least bit quieter, a clatter in the kitchen and a shape sprinting for the back door and red blossomed beneath his claws before he could even process the number of eyes on the gutless, heartless, honorless _coward _that couldn't run from the natural consequences of what he'd done fast enough--

His eyes cracked open to try to find the fifth bottle. All he could see was a long drop with a short stop.

_It would be quick,_ whispered the little voice that usually found him halfway through the last bottle. _Gravity will do all the work. Just a few seconds, and then it'll all be over. It doesn't have to hurt anymore._

_If we jump, we'll be together again._

His tongue was a dead lump in his mouth. He wanted to feel whole again. He wanted to stop crying himself to sleep. He wanted to stop seeing their bloodied, bullet-riddled bodies when he closed his eyes. He wanted to go _home._

He wanted his parents back.

He wanted another drink.

But when he turned his head to fumble for a bottle that maybe-just-maybe had his fate written at the bottom, a dark brown hand snatched his salvation away.

He thought he jumped, but maybe the alcohol had turned that part of his startle reaction off, because he just kind of swung his head up to follow his self-medication. His grandmother was on the other end, spindly and old and leaning heavily on her cane but still every inch as imposing as her interns seemed to think she was. Her mandibles were tight against her face and her nasal plates were flared, every line of her stance read fury, but her eyes flashed with something else, something Desolas couldn't read, not with so much horosk assaulting his system in such a short time. He tried to think of something snappy to say, some biting retort, something to lash out and make her give his booze back and leave him to his quickly-darkening corner of the universe.

But all he could manage was a small, pitiful, "That's mine."

Parmat didn't seem fazed. "And you can have it back inside, where you're not a drunken stumble away from a broken neck."

Her words took a second to process. His mandibles and brow plates went down into a lopsided scowl. "I haven't fallen yet."

"It's that last word that worries me."

Her subvocals rolled against his cowl, and the look in her eyes finally clicked. His mandibles rattled. "I'll be fine," he mumbled, lowering his head. "I just need to be alone."

"I understand." Her voice sounded like she was trying not to choke. "But I would feel better if I knew you were safe while you do it."

Her subvocals warbled. Desolas's throat knotted up, and he almost choked on his own tongue trying to speak. While he struggled, she tried again, voice so soft he could barely understand. "Please, Desolas. I can't lose you, too."

His gizzard churned. He met her eyes, and he saw his own grief echoed within. "I just want to see my mom again."

She swallowed. The bottles clinked faintly in their case. When she spoke, her voice shook. "So do I, _axekonah._ So do I."

The old nickname stung, just a little. A small, Palavenian predator-bird known for its cry that sounded like laughter ringing across the prairie. He'd asked why Parmat called him that, once, when he was seven and curious and following his father around like a lost varren. Dad had said–

_"You were always such a happy little cowl-biter, laughing at everything we did." Dad's mandibles tilted up in the slightest of smiles as his hands worked the clay, lost in nostalgia for just a moment. "It was so easy to get you to cheer up when you cried. All we had to do was..."_

He didn't remember what they had to do, because the memory bubbled and warped with the gulping, pathetic cry that wrenched its way out of his jaws. His eyes shut, his head tipped back, the world melted away to the wail in his lungs and the stabbing pain in his heart. His subvocals screamed his anguish to the void, four months of agony he hadn't voiced since that terrible afternoon pouring out of him in a wordless howl. His parents were dead, their ghosts walked his dreams, his little brother wasn't speaking, he was only twenty-four, _he hadn't gotten there in time, if he'd just been fast enough-_

Bony, long-clawed fingers gripped his legs, hauled them back over to the roof. A warm weight pressed against his side, thin arms that quaked wrapped around his torso, his head was tucked into a familiar cowl. Parmat's scent flooded his nose as she held him, gently rocked him and chuffed to him like a squalling infant. "I know, little bird, I know," she soothed.

He gulped and gasped for breath, instinctively wrapping his arms around her frail torso and pulling her close like Saren's stupid toy varren. "It's not _fair,"_ he whimpered against her neck. "They never _did _anything."

She sighed, roughly nuzzling her jaw against his crest. "I know, darling. I miss them, too."

Desolas snuffled, shoving his face into the hollow of her neck. "They were my _parents."_

Parmat was quiet for a moment, then gently squeezed him tighter. Her throat pulsed under his face as she swallowed, her own subvocals whispering sorrow. "He was my son."

They stayed like that for a while, simply holding each other in their grief, long enough that Desolas's neck was starting to ache. Eventually, Parmat patted his shoulder and sighed. "Come on. Your brother will need food soon. Let's get you back inside, lie under some blankets and wallow in comfort."

She slowly extracted himself from his grip, and he whimpered, but allowed her to guide him to his feet and leaned on her shoulder as they walked back towards the staircase leading down into the building.

Saren was waiting for them when they walked into the apartment, gangly little legs folded neatly beneath him and stupid toy sat up next to him, the intense, ice-blue eyes still too big for the plates around them trained squarely on the door. He must have been starting to nod off, because he sat up quickly when the door opened, then scrambled to his feet, grabbing his toy on the way. Desolas paused, watching his little brother awkwardly fold his arms around the varren's neck and hug it to his keel, then sighed and reached down to rub the back of his head. "Told you I'd be back."

Saren just ruffled his little mandibles and sniffed his wrist, only to flare his nasal plates and shake his head while snorting when he got the strong whiff of alcohol. Desolas's heart twisted.

Tiny footsteps followed as Parmat led Desolas back to the guest room he'd thrown his gear into, pausing in the doorway as she eased him down into bed. "I'll order takeout for dinner," she told him, running a hand over his crest with one hand and pulling a blanket over him with the other. "Stay here and rest."

Desolas snuffled a bit, then rolled over to face the wall. Parmat's only response was a soft sigh. As she drifted out, she paused, then dropped her voice to a gentle hum. "Your brother has had a rough day, snow-bird. He's going to rest back here for the night, so try not to disturb him, alright?" A pause. Desolas assumed Saren had nodded, because Parmat hummed her thanks, and her footsteps retreated down the hall.

More silence, then little feet padded into the room, and the blanket moved to one side. Talons scrabbling against the frame was Desolas's only warning before the mattress sank down with a new weight and Saren stumbled his way over his neck. He flinched and hissed, but Saren ignored him, plopping down between him and the wall like it was _his _bed. Desolas grimaced and bared his teeth at him. "Didn't you hear Parmat? Go away."

Saren blinked slowly, then lifted that damn varren toy out to him as if Desolas could possibly be even the slightest bit unfamiliar with it.

Desolas huffed, but the little bag of bones he'd gotten instead of a varren like he'd actually asked for wasn't deterred. He just set the toy down and tugged on the blanket until he could crawl right on under with him. Desolas grunted, lifting his arm in surprise to see what he was doing. "Fuck you want? Leave me alone."

Saren apparently saw the raised arm as an invitation, because he turned around and laid down next to him, snuggling up close and resting his head on Desolas's keel. A beat, then he stretched forward, grabbed his toy, and pulled it under with him so he could hug it while he nestled himself closer against his big brother's core.

Desolas scowled. "Oh, _really?_ Fuckin'..." He tried to think of a way to kick the little nestling out without making him wail for help, but he was too drunk and too tired for that, so he just grumbled and rolled back onto his side, curling his torso just enough to make space for a particularly tiny five-year-old turian. "I _guess _you can stay."

Saren gave no response, just cuddling his toy tighter and pressing back against Desolas's warm, solid chest.

Desolas hesitated, then sighed and put his arm down over his brother, holding him just secure enough to be comfortable for both of them. He guessed it wasn't _Saren's_ fault he'd been drinking.

Saren's breathing was slowing. Desolas looked down at him, mandibles moving in and out like even the slightest disturbance might ruin it. Already? Saren hadn't gone to sleep so quickly in ages, not since...

He swallowed. _Not since he had Mom and Dad._

He curled a little closer, a little tighter around his brother without even thinking about it. Saren hadn't spoken a word since their parents had died, too shaken from what he'd been through to do much more than cry and wobble out awkward subvocals. Nobody knew what he'd seen, and Desolas suspected he didn't really want to. Poor kid.

His eyes drifted to the stuffed varren clutched in his brother's little claws. They'd tried to wash the mud off it when they got back to base, clean it up a bit after Desolas had accidentally stepped on it in the woods behind their house, but some brown patches still remained. Saren wouldn't let Parmat take it away long enough to go for a spin in the washing machine and get cleaner than they'd managed with a public sink. She'd sighed and said _it's fine, let him have it._

Desolas's mandibles flickered, something gnawing on his heart. He guessed it wasn't really fair to keep calling it a stupid toy. Finding it on the ground had been what had led them straight to Saren, after all.

Besides, it was a gift from Mom.

Desolas swallowed and wrapped his arms tighter around his tiny brother, the little nagging voice that goaded him on earlier coming back to him. _What if I **did **jump?_

He ducked his head and nuzzled Saren's stubby little crest. Saren was only five, he probably didn't even fully understand what Mom and Dad being dead _meant._ What if Desolas disappeared, too? He'd only have Parmat left. Parmat, and a floppy stuffed varren their mom gave him for his birthday when he was two.

Maybe... Maybe he could stick around. At least for a while.

Saren shifted in his sleep, rubbing his face against Desolas's keel and chirping quietly. Desolas's heart twinged, and he hugged the tiny body in his arms just a little tighter. "I got you, buddy," he mumbled, nudging his head with his own. "I'm right here."

_And I'm not going anywhere._


End file.
